Reading Lists

Generation Joshua Recommended Reading List

Thomas Jefferson once wrote "I cannot live without books." But what books ought the educated member of a free society read?

Here at Generation Joshua, we've taken time working through some of the greatest classics of Western civilization to compile a list of books that we would recommend to any conservative American should read.

The list ranges from classic texts which built Western philosophy, such as Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, to iconic works of Western literature, such as Dante'sThe Divine Comedy or Shakespeare's Henry V, to modern classics of conservative political theory, such as Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order or Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. In addition, we've included a number of supplemental resources to aid in understanding the big picture of Western civilization.

20th CenturyBaroness Orczy - The Scarlet PimpernelG.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was ThursdayT.S. Eliot - Murder in the CathedralT.S. Eliot - The Four QuartetsC.S. Lewis - The Space TrilogyC.S. Lewis - The Chronicles of NarniaJ.R.R. Tolkien - The HobbitJ.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the RingsGeorge Orwell - Animal FarmErnest Hemingway - The Old Man and the SeaRay Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451Robert Heinlein - Starship TroopersHarper Lee - To Kill A MockingbirdAleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day In The Life of Ivan DenisovichRobert Frost - The Poetry of Robert FrostOrson Scott Card - Ender's Game

Philosophy

OverviewJames Sire - The Universe Next DoorBill Bennett - The Book of VirtuesJ.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

Politics and Economics

Aristotle - Politics
Machievelli - The Prince
John Locke - Second Treatise on Civil Government
Montesquieu - The Spirit of the Laws
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay - The Federalist Papers
Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France
Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
F.H. Hayek - The Road to Serfdom
Richard Weaver - Ideas Have Consequences
Russell Kirk - The Roots of American Order